Tag Archives: John Kerry

I do believe that hell has frozen over. It’s official, I’m tellin’ ya!

U.S. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry has said out loud that he “would advise against” Donald Trump pulling out of the deal that seeks to prohibit Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal.

That’s right. Thornberry, who usually stands foursquare behind the president’s idiocy, is now sounding downright reasonable and rational in urging the president to back off his threat to pull out of the Iran nuke deal.

Thornberry said this on Fox News Sunday: “Secretary (of Defense James) Mattis talked about the inspectors that are in there. Does Iran kick those inspectors out so that we lose what visibility we have there?” he asked. “The Europeans are not going to reimpose sanctions. So where does that leave us and Iran? You need to have a clearer idea about next steps if we are going to pull out, and especially given the larger context of Iran’s aggressive activities in the Middle East.”

This comes from a lawmaker who initially opposed the Iran deal. Why? Well, beats me. Maybe it was merely because it was struck by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.

According to NBC News: Other Republicans have said they are hoping that the Trump administration modifies the agreement so that it addresses certain holes such as not addressing Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Thornberry is far from the only former deal critic to take another look at it.

Trump says he plans to announce Tuesday whether he is pulling out of the deal. I hope he modifies his initial blanket opposition, despite the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who calls the deal a disaster and an invitation for Iran to go to war with Israel.

As for Thornberry’s change of heart, I certainly welcome whatever influence the Clarendon Republican might wield with a president who, um, listens to nobody.

Like this:

The long-sought “two-state solution” to a lasting peace agreement in the Middle East might have been given a critical punch in the gut because of hideous remarks from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Holocaust, Abbas said, was partly caused by the behavior of Jews. According to The Hill: Abbas pointed to the Jews’ “social behavior” and “their social function related to banks and interest” in a speech on Monday to the Palestinian National Council.

“From the 11th century until the Holocaust that took place in Germany, those Jews — who moved to western and eastern Europe — were subjected to a massacre every 10 to 15 years. But why did this happen? They say: ‘It is because we are Jews,’ ” Abbas said.

Abbas’s remarks have drawn worldwide condemnation. This came from former Secretary of State John Kerry, who said, via Twitter: These comments are wrong, ugly, and unacceptable – anywhere from anyone – but particularly from anyone who says he wants to be a peacemaker. No excuses for antisemitism: words to be condemned, not explained away.

And this came from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, gave another anti-Semitic speech. With utmost ignorance and brazen gall, he claimed that European Jews were persecuted and murdered not because they were Jews but because they gave loans with interest.

Indeed, the Abbas’s comments disgrace the cause of the search for peace.

The Holocaust was caused solely by the evil intent of a regime that took control of a sovereign country, Germany, and sought to eradicate Europe of citizens merely because of their religious faith.

For Mahmoud Abbas to somehow lay part of the blame on Jews because of their “social behavior” is like blaming a child for the beating he gets from an adult because he cries too much.

One of the worst-kept secrets in Washington, D.C., is out: Donald J. Trump plans to decertify the agreement hammered out by the Obama administration to curb Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons.

The president calls it the “worst deal ever negotiated” in the history of Planet Earth. He said he’d never strike such a deal. He has called it an “embarrassment” to the United States of America. He says it is not in our national interest.

Forgive me if I’ve missed something, although I don’t believe that’s the case, but has the president ever offered a single detail over precisely why he hates this deal with such a passion?

I haven’t heard him articulate a single policy dispute he has with it. He has spoken completely, totally and utterly in platitudes and clichés about why he hates this deal.

I cannot help but wonder whether his opposition stems largely — if not entirely — from the fact that President Obama’s national security team, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, negotiated this deal. Sure, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu hates the deal, too, but he hates any effort to make peace with his nation’s mortal enemies; in a way, I kind of understand Netanyahu’s suspicion, even if it’s a bit overheated.

However, the president of the United States owes his constituents — you and me — a much more detailed explanation into why he opposes an agreement in which U.S. analysts say is being honored by the Iranians. Trump, though, says otherwise.

Like this:

Former Secretary of State John Kerry spoke a fundamental truth about how difficult it is to take back public statements.

Donald J. Trump said the patently wrong thing about the violence that erupted over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., calling an end to violence “on many sides.”

Rather than single out the white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen who initiated the violence, Trump chose instead to equivocate shamefully.

Well, he took a baby step toward redemption today by singling out the racists and bigots who gathered in Charlottesville to protest the taking down of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Many observers have noted that the president seemed a bit uncomfortable today as he delivered his prepared remarks.

Kerry, though, said you can’t “take back” the “many sides” comment. Kerry called the president’s first response “revealing” and said they had empowered “the worst of the worst.”

I’m reminded of what my late friend and former colleague Claude Duncan was fond of saying: “You can’t unhonk the horn.”

Indeed, people in high places aren’t usually allowed to take mulligans. There aren’t any do-overs — especially for the president of the United States, whose words resonate and keep resonating long after he utters them.

He also put several of our nation’s key allies on notice, too, by suggesting that the United States’ commitment to negotiated agreements isn’t as rock-solid as it must be.

Tillerson put the world on notice this week that the United States no longer thinks much of a deal meant to deny Iran the ability to develop a nuclear weapon. It’s part of Donald John Trump’s vow to renegotiate agreements that he says are worst in the history of humankind.

The Iran nuke deal falls into that category, according to the president.

The deal was brokered by former Secretary of State John Kerry in conjunction with foreign ministers from Great Britain, China, France, Germany and, oh yes, Russia. What would a U.S. withdrawal from the agreement mean to our partners?

This is just me, but perhaps it would mean that the United States isn’t a trustworthy partner. It well could fracture our international alliances, particularly as it regards the Brits, French and the Germans, who are critical players in our nation’s ongoing geopolitical struggle with forces that seek to undermine us at every turn.

I’m not going to assert that the Iran nuke deal is perfect in every single way. But it does allow for careful monitoring of the Islamic Republic’s intentions and it gives the United States plenty of room to re-impose economic sanctions if it’s determined that Iran isn’t complying with the terms of the agreement.

Tillerson’s comments centered on Iran’s continued support of international terrorism. OK, then. Deal with that separately, Mr. Secretary.

Although the secretary didn’t say directly that the Trump administration would back out of the nuke deal, he did sound a dire warning. According to Politico: “Apparently referencing a failed 1994 nuclear deal with North Korea, which now has nuclear weapons, Tillerson said Wednesday that the Iran agreement is ‘another example of buying off a power who has nuclear ambitions. We just don’t see that that’s a prudent way to be dealing with Iran.’”

Jason Miller quit suddenly this past week as communications director in Donald J. Trump’s new presidential administration. He offered the usual “spend more time with my family” reason for quitting a key job in a new administration.

Then comes this from another Trump transition aide: “Congratulations to the baby-daddy on being named WH ­Comms Director!” That’s what A.J. Delgado wrote on Twitter, adding that Miller is the “2016 version of John Edwards,” referring to the former Democratic U.S. senator and presidential candidate John Edwards, who had an extramarital affair that produced a daughter.

The Washington Post reports that Delgado deactivated his Twitter account, which leads me to believe that what he wrote has more than a grain of truth to it.

Is this important? I suppose it is if you want your presidential administration to be free of the kind of scandal that brings down other presidential contenders. Consider, too, that Edwards — who ran as the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee in 2004 on a ticket led by John Kerry — came within just a few thousand votes in Ohio of actually becoming vice president of the United States.

So, you don’t want your chief spokesman — in this case Miller — speaking for a president when he is lugging around some potentially explosive baggage.

Trump insists that he uses Twitter to communicate policy issues in real time. Others within the president-elect’s circle of advisers apparently use it as a not-so-secret weapon.

Virtually ever “reputable” poll had Hillary Rodham Clinton winning the presidency on Nov. 8. Some had her winning by a fairly comfortable margin. She, of course, didn’t. Donald J. Trump is now preparing to become the next president.

Why is this familiar?

I recall the 2004 election in which President Bush won a second term over Sen. John F. Kerry. The sticking point that year was in Ohio, where exit pollsters had Kerry carrying the Buckeye State. Then the votes started pouring in. Bush won Ohio. He was re-elected. Kerry and his team were stunned. They thought they had Ohio in the bag. Had they won, they would have had just enough electoral votes to defeat the president.

Those dismal exit poll results, along with other misfires around the nation, signaled the end of Voter News Service, the outfit that coordinated all the polling and vote tabulation around the country.

The screw-ups this time were much more severe. Even the once-highly regarded FiveThirtyEight.com poll done by Nate Silver missed by a mile. Silver’s analysis had Clinton with a 71 percent chance of winning on he eve of the election.

Of course, many of the pollsters are trying to cover their backsides. They say they predicted Clinton’s national popular vote percentage, more or less. They missed, though, in several key battleground states where Trump won: Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida — all states won by Barack Obama in 2008, who won all of them again except for North Carolina in 2012.

Polling has come a long way since the infamous “Dewey beats Truman” headline of 1948. However, as we witnessed during this election season, it still has some distance yet to travel.

I feel the need to put another brief twist to this business about marital infidelity and its emergence as an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

For starters, Donald J. Trump’s assertion that Hillary Clinton’s husband’s transgressions disqualify her for high office is ludicrous on its face. Bill Clinton made a mistake in the late 1990s. He got impeached for it; the Senate thought better about tossing him out of office and acquitted him of the charges brought against him.

Hillary’s role? She became the aggrieved wife of the nation’s foremost politician.

OK, but that entire episode spurred another kind of politician.

This was the guy who would boast on the campaign stump, in TV ads, on printed material about how he is faithful to his wife.

“Elect me!” he would say. “I’m a loving husband and devoted father. I believe in the traditional concept of marriage.”

I never could stop wondering: Since when does staying faithful to your sacred marital vows become a bragging point?

Oh, and yes, this kind of phony fealty to marriage does get politicians into some serious trouble. Do you remember former Sen. John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate who ran with Sen. John Kerry in 2004? I recall Edwards boasting of his love for his late wife, Elizabeth, while he was cavorting with Rielle Hunter … and with whom he brought a daughter into the world.

We all remember how we heard the terrible news. We all remember the horror, the shock, the grief, the sickening feeling we felt as we watched the events unfold on that terrible day.

That day ought to be a day of reflection over what happened and a day of solemn prayer for the nation that continues to fight on against the evil forces that seek to destroy us.

It has become something of a tradition since 9/11. President Bush and Sen. John Kerry suspended their campaigns in 2004, as did Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008; indeed, Obama and McCain appeared together at an event at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. In 2012, President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney held events, but those events memorialized the victims of the attack.

It’s fair to wonder out loud — as some have done already — whether Donald J. Trump is deliberately trying to lose this election.

Is he throwing the election? Is he deliberately setting himself up to lose the 2016 presidential election?

I’m not ready to swallow that bait. However, some things he said today at his foreign policy speech have me wondering.

For example, and I’ll offer just this one for now …

What in the world is he thinking when he criticizes the most recent Republican president and his administration for going to war in Iraq in 2003?

Trump didn’t mention President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney by name, but he ventured into a scathing condemnation of their decision to start the Iraq War.

I can recall when Democrats did that in 2004. When Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Sen. John Kerry criticized the administration’s decision to go to war, he was vilified by Republicans. He was condemned by those who proceeded to fabricate phony criticism of Sen. Kerry’s gallant service during the Vietnam War.

Now, a dozen years later, the Republican presidential nominee says the very same thing that Democrats said about the Bush administration and the silence from the GOP base has been, well, deafening.

Still, it has me wondering whether those Republicans are going to sit this election out, denying Trump of the base of voters he’ll need to make this election competitive.

I don’t believe Trump is a stupid man. He’s smart enough — maybe, perhaps — to understand that he isn’t up to the job he is seeking. Or, just maybe he’s campaigning for president as some sort of unprecedented publicity stunt.

I can’t figure this out.

Yes, I’ve been wrong all along about the shelf life of a Trump presidential candidacy. In a normal election year, he would have been laughed off the stage and booted out of the race over any one of the many things he’s said along the way. Not this year.

I don’t feel too badly, though. Others have been just as wrong.

As long as many of us are speculating about what in the world is guiding the Trump campaign into the ditch, it’s fair to ask: Is this guy taking a dive?